Best of Luck, Mockingjay
by marblesharp
Summary: Because it's better not to breathe than to breathe a lie. Jackson wishes Katniss luck because she and all of Panem need it.


/**_ Best of Luck, Mockingjay_** /

_Because it's better not to breathe than to breathe a lie._

* * *

There were two ways Hadley Jackson thought she'd die underground: slow and mundane, withering in her compartment bed or all at once, booming loud and explosive, deep within the bunker. These were the only ways to die before the war.

_Unless_, she considers, but stops herself. She focuses on the mission, or rather, the Mockingjay's mission, and shoots a Peacekeeper right through the helmet.

Up ahead, what's left of the Squad clamors down the Transfer while muttations tear toward them, ripping apart Peacekeepers caught in their path.

Between Hadley and Star Squad 451 is a pod labeled MEAT GRINDER on the Holo, looking just as it sounds. The whirring of the blades ensure that she and Soldier Leeg (1) will not follow the others to safety above ground.

With Soldier Leeg beside her, Hadley feels an odd, selfish comfort that she won't have to face these creatures alone. They're both hopeless, though, exhausted and running low on ammo as well as will. Sarabelle Leeg lost her sister but she's still got a father to return to. Hadley is certain her own sister Rem would bring her back to life just to kill her again herself if she died, and Jeremy would probably help Rem get here by borrowing his aircraft in the Hangar for unauthorized purposes - illegal, but worth it.

People they've already said goodbye to when they left are waiting for them in District Thirteen. The foreign Squad members are no different, neither are these Peacekeepers who cry out for family as they die.

They all just want to win and go home. Problem is, there's more than one side.

That Peeta Mellark wanted an armistice, back when he was still held captive in the Capitol. But then he was rescued, came to Thirteen all deranged and homicidal, so no one really took him or his proposal seriously after that.

Soldier Katniss Everdeen must have really been trouble for President Coin to try to martyr her. While only Commander Boggs called her out on it, Hadley could also see Coin's motive - she's farsighted like that. Soldier Leeg (2) was killed from an unknowingly active pod during a shoot before the Squad was too deep into the Capitol to return to the Base, and Soldier Mellark was sent as a replacement, out of all the more eligible cadets who have trained their entire lives for combat.

Though they would have been wasted on the Squad, anyway. Until Commander Boggs detonated a pod that blew off his legs and their initial assignment went to shit, they were basically playing war: aiming at nonliving targets for fake gritty propos, wasting ammo, acting like badass soldiers when real ones died every day.

Hadley hadn't liked it, was even disappointed, but she wasn't glad when Roblin Boggs died on some Capitol citizen's kitchen tiles. It automatically appointed her as first in command, which soon meant nothing considering the Mockingjay pulled some assassination plan out of her feathered ass that granted her agency over the Holo. But Hadley finally got to fight a war she'd spent too much time dreading and preparing for.

At least the Mockingjay is trying to do _something _remotely productive. She was just as annoyed with the cameras as the rest of the Squad, but that doesn't excuse her. Already her plan to kill President Snow has instead killed Soldier Scout Mitchell and Cressida's assistant Messalla, and endangered Soldier Leeg and Hadley herself. Soldier Everdeen better know what's she's gotten not only herself but the others into with this little plan of hers.

_Best of luck, Mockingjay_, Hadley wishes as the girl's long, dark braid swishes around a corner, disappearing, the Squad right behind.

All the Peacekeepers are silent on the ground. The mutts keep coming, though, overpowering them. Soldier Leeg cries out as one clamps its maw into her shoulder, her neck, like a lover. Hadley can't shoot enough of them down to help.

A mutt rams into her before she can pull the trigger, and they're grappling on the tiles for a moment before it pins her with its scaly bulk, raises its claws. Each laceration brings a wave of blood, pain, and more of those blindingly iridescent white mutts by its side.

She can't fight it, can't look at it. Sarabelle is screaming louder than the mutts somewhere to her left. Hadley meets eyes with her for half a second before the very gold-flecked green eye she was focused on is ripped from its socket. A bloody rope protruding from the empty socket strains the woman's head forward before the mutt severs it, the eyeball still skewered on its claw. Her mouth gapes open in pain and shock, much like Hadley's.

For reasons she could not confide in anyone, Hadley never wanted to die at the hands of a living, breathing thing. A bullet, merciful if accurate. An inaccurate bullet, hell but over soon enough. A bullet, a bomb, a rain of shrapnel - they can't consciously make the decision to end her life.

The mutt attacking her knows what it's doing, knows, and wants, its actions to kill her, and that is the most horrible truth. Yet it can't detach its claws and simply cease to follow orders programmed into its mind since creation.

Real or not real? She is going to die.

She'll never again take walks with Rem after lunch and ask about her students and why the food is still the same when everything else has changed and how time has made her so bitter and chuckle when Rem answers, "Maybe it's the soup."

She'll never again wake up grimacing at Jeremy's morning breath and say, a little breathless, "Get off me, you idiot," when he mumbles, "Morning, Had," into her lips and buries his fingers in her blonde hair and she'll never love him again.

And, damn it, she'll never again have her schedule dyed onto her forearm and dread passing little kids in the corridors to go to training and yearn for something an epidemic stole from her, too many months along to not feel the sting of hope as it's ripped away, terminated, because people let her down and she let Jer down and she'll never, ever be a mother.

The Mockingjay's a tough one, that's for sure. It's sad to witness the deterioration of not only the rebellion's symbol, but such a strong girl who got caught up in the mess that is politics during a time when she needed to rest. Hadley had once scanned the figure of the girl wandering aimlessly in the corridors, saw her stomach was sunken in, not swollen at the hips like Peeta Mellark said would happen.

She almost reminds Hadley of herself, younger, crossing that blurry line between boys and warfare, too. If Soldier Everdeen kills Snow and survives, she'll have another chance at that family.

_Best of luck, Mockingjay._

The mutts have moved on. They must be throwing themselves into the pod because the creatures' shrieking and the blades' whirring are at their loudest. Soon, the MEAT GRINDER clogs up with minced corpses, enabling the remaining mutts to cross.

Alone - she is alone.

Hadley can feel the end nearing as well as she can feel her torso flayed open and her scalp hanging by a hair - maybe literally, she can't see much right now. For some reason they kept her head on.

The pod has slowed considerably, but it's still fast enough. At an excruciating pace, Hadley drags herself to the edge of the MEAT GRINDER. She cannot die at the hands of something the Capitol made live. After a painful turn she has to rest halfway at, ironically enough, she grunts as she tips herself over the edge. There's a dreadfully relieving sensation of falling, and the blades are so close her when a thought hits her.

She forgot to disarm herself -

Maybe the mutts weren't the only mindless creatures after all.

* * *

AN: Written for Starvation's All Hallow's's Eve Contest. Tagline is from _Broken Crown_, by Mumford & Sons. I own nothing.


End file.
